Law Snapping at Man in Pit Bull Shooting

John Howard Algie, 50, of Newport Beach, says he was reacting as anyone might when awakened at midnight by loud snarling and growling in his backyard.

Algie said he grabbed his .22-caliber pistol and charged right through the screen in the screen door to the second-story patio that overlooks his garden. He peered down and saw a dog that definitely was not his.

“All I could hear was the growling, scarier than hell, and I don’t know what the dog is growling at,” he said. “That dog was doing something to somebody, so I shot it.”

The dog, a part pit bullterrier and part Rottweiler named Alex, was wounded but survived, police said.

A neighbor who said he had taken Alex for a midnight walk and was trying to pull him from Algie’s backyard received bullet-fragment wounds on the bottom of one foot, officers said.

And Algie, senior vice president of marketing for a Texas oil producer, was arrested, booked into Orange County Jail and charged with cruelty to an animal, which can carry a prison sentence. He is due in Harbor Municipal Court Aug. 13 for arraignment.

According to the police report of the incident, officers answered a call about a shooting in the 200 block of Lugonia Street in Newport Shores and found Cory Daina Flynn, 24, waiting with the wounded Alex in Flynn’s garage a few doors from Algie’s home.

Officers quoted Flynn as saying he took Alex for a walk down the alley and removed the leash. Alex, apparently aware that a dog lived at Algie’s residence--a Doberman pinscher named Panzer--sniffed at the gate, found it was unlocked and pushed his way through, Flynn told police.

Flynn said that there was a confrontation between the dogs and that he went into the yard and grabbed Alex by the collar. He said he then heard a loud sound, saw that Alex was wounded and pulled him out of the yard.

The police report states that officers asked Algie why he fired at the dog “since nothing was around it.”

“Natural reaction because of a pit bull, I guess,” Algie said, according to the report.

Algie said Thursday that he is angry at being cast as the criminal by police. He said they should be more concerned about the intruder, “which is what I call him. I don’t know what else you would call him.”

Officers said the wound to Alex’s left side was not life threatening--he was treated and released by a veterinarian--and that Flynn’s foot wounds were minor.